This invention relates to methods and apparatus for cutting ice, and more particularly relates to methods and apparatus for cutting a conventional ice cake and the like into rectangular blocks for use in snow-cone machines and the like.
It is well known in the prior art that conventionally sized block-ice or ice cakes approximately 300 pounds and nominally sized 11".times.22".times.42" must be cut into smaller typically rectangular blocks for use in commercially available apparatus. For instance, ice blocks approximately 10 pounds and dimensioned 5".times.7".times.11" are typically used in ice coolers and the like. As another example, ice block 14 pounds and dimensioned 5".times.5".times.14" are typically used in snow-cone shaving machines. Such snow-cones are, of course, accumulations of ice shavings configured with a conical cross-section and placed within a paper container of like conical cross-section. As is well known by the multitudes of consumers who have enjoyed a snow-cone on a hot day, a snow-cone, after being saturated with a flavored syrup, is hand-fed into the mouth.
During the summer months and particularly in geographical regions which are characterized by prolonged high temperatures, the demand is extraordinarily high for such 10 or 14 pound blocks. In the southwest region of the United States, for example, snow-cones are a popular source of cooling refreshment. But, unfortunately, the blocks required for such snow-cone machines are cut from larger ice cakes with considerable expenditure of man-time and commensurate ice waste.
As is known by those skilled in the art, to manually cut a 300 pound ice cake into blocks sized for a snow-cone machine and the like typically takes about 45 minutes to one hour. Probably more accurately described as a scoring-and-breaking process, inherent in this process, however, is considerable debris generation of and waste. Indeed, it is not uncommon for as much as 50 pounds from a 300 pound cake to be wasted. Hence, such 15% waste and labor-intensive cutting methodology has limited productivity for several years. There has been limited availability of an ice cake cutting apparatus and method to produce suitable blocks for ice coolers and snow-cone machines.
An alternative approach to making more suitably sized ice blocks available for ice coolers and the like, 10 pound blocks may be formed in freezers. But such freezing obviously is limited by the liquid-to-solid phase change process: approximately 150 blocks can be produced approximately every 26 hours in a conventional freezer. As is known in the art, however, larger ice cakes tend to engender better quality ice, having fewer bubbles and other defects dispersed throughout.
There are several ice cake cutting machines known in the art which attempt to deliver ice blocks to an anxious marketplace. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,576,146, Adams teaches an apparatus for automatically cutting ice blocks from a conventional ice cake using a hoist to control the vertical position a supporting rig relative to a pair of spaced apart rotary saws which cut slots into a face of an ice cake, and relative to a chain saw which cuts perpendicularly through another face of the cake. These blades are configured to form three blocks of predetermined size. Penetration into a cake is accomplished by rotation of circular saw blades. Unfortunately, in addition to being complicated and expensive, the Adams apparatus suffers from the disadvantage that all of its working parts are located above the ice cake, thereby introducing contamination problems. The size of blocks produced by this apparatus are also constrained by the width thereof.
As another example, in U.S. Pat. No. 766,111, Mowery teaches an ice cutting machine which cuts an ice cake into cubes and the like using a combination of a vertically disposed gang of circular saws and a horizontally disposed band saw. The ice cake is horizontally placed upon a table and then manually engaged with these various saw blades and manually kept in contact therewith. The cut pieces pass through an oblique chute located below the table and fall into a receptacle. Thus, besides, there are significant safety concerns related to not only injury to the limbs, but also to injury caused by random discharge of ice chips and the like.
A recent contribution to the art is disclosed by Allen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,939. Allen teaches an apparatus for automatically cutting 240 pound cakes of dry ice by feeding it through an inclined chute using two pair of counter-rotating radial saw blades. The placement of spacers of varying length along the blades' axial shaft controls the size of the blocks produced. This design uses gravity-feed to effectuate engagement of a cake against the rotating blades and isolates the ice from the moving parts located outside the chute.
While, as hereinbefore exemplified, practitioners in the art have attempted to improve the means and method for generating ice blocks and cubes, there has been less effort expended to provide an inexpensive and simple machine for productively and safely cutting conventionally sized ice cakes into blocks of prescribed dimension. It would be particularly advantageous to have available to those skilled in the art an apparatus and method which could use a simple table surface to cut ice cakes while providing automatic gravity-feed thereof to avoid safety hazards associated with manual feed thereof. It would also benefit the prior art if such apparatus were designed with an effective means to completely cut an ice cake into prescribed size ice blocks in approximately 2 minutes but with minimal waste.
Accordingly, these limitations and disadvantages of the prior art are overcome with the present invention, and improved means and techniques are provided which are useful for cutting ice cakes into rectangular ice blocks for use in snow-cone shaving machines and the like.